PNAS Cover Features Research by Three PNNL Atmospheric Scientists

Congratulations to Drs. Steven
Ghan, Ian
Kraucunas and Philip
Rasch. They are co-authors of research depicted on the cover of the May
24, 2016 issue of Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS. The
work, "Improving Our Fundamental Understanding of the Role of Aerosol-cloud
Interactions in the Climate System," was a result of a multi-institutional Arthur
M. Sackler Colloquium held in 2015.

The colloquium was motivated by the seeming lack of progress
in reducing the amount of uncertainty that still remains in understanding how
clouds and atmospheric particles, called aerosols, interact to change the Earth's
energy balance. The attendees, a who's-who of scientific experts on the aerosol-cloud
interaction processes, sought to understand why these effects are so difficult
to capture in climate models and what needs to be done to move the science
forward.